0:00

This is the BBC. Diamond

0:30

Guarantee ensures you get the

0:32

highest quality at the best

0:34

price. Express yourself with Blue

0:36

Nile, the original online jeweler,

0:38

at bluenile.com. That's bluenile.com. Hey,

0:42

I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint

0:44

Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies

0:46

are allowed to raise prices due to

0:48

inflation. They said yes. And then when

0:50

I asked if raising prices technically violates

0:52

those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what

0:54

the f*** are you talking about, you

0:56

insane Hollywood a*****e? So to recap, we're

0:58

cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to

1:00

just $15 a month. Give

1:04

it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. $45

1:06

up front for three months plus taxes and fees. Promote for new

1:08

customers for limited time. Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month. Mint

1:10

Unlimited slows. BBC

1:15

Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello.

1:19

I've just done something no broadcaster

1:21

should ever do before they record

1:23

a podcast. I've troughed a

1:25

load of chocolate because we are doing

1:27

an episode about the price of chocolate,

1:29

which has gone through the roof, which is

1:31

worrying news on a weekend when we tend

1:34

to eat quite a lot of chocolate. And

1:37

we did some market research, which

1:39

meant there were quite a few Easter eggs

1:42

lying around the office and I was feeling

1:44

quite bad-ish. And I did eat

1:46

slightly too much before recording this

1:48

episode of newscast. So if it

1:50

turns into sort of like ASMR video of

1:52

me going, I

1:54

do apologize in advance. But the

1:56

other thing I learned is that the price

1:58

of chocolate, of which you can we will be discussing

2:01

is based on the price per metric

2:04

ton and I've realized I

2:06

didn't really know what a metric ton actually is.

2:08

Turns out it's a thousand kilograms and

2:10

to make that chocolate related that means

2:12

a thousand kilograms is the

2:15

same weight as 25,000 cream

2:17

eggs. Speak that trivia

2:19

fans. Anyway this is gonna be the

2:21

subject of this special episode of NewsCast

2:23

to get your Easter Bank holiday weekend

2:25

started. Why

2:28

can't people buy a house? Look at their

2:30

wages. Do you have any questions on things

2:32

that are not related to mass? People who

2:34

say that we were partying simply do not

2:36

know what they are talking about. The era

2:39

of global warming has ended, the era of

2:41

global boiling has arrived. It's the first time

2:43

ever I've been able to say well

2:45

done cheer. I'll end by tempting her

2:48

to update NewsCast and update this house.

2:50

The Prime Minister is not under a

2:52

day. Hello it's Adam

2:54

in the NewsCast studio and we

2:56

thought everyone is kind of getting

2:58

ready for the bank holiday weekend

3:00

for Easter rather than doing

3:02

an episode where we just do all

3:05

the world's big news stories. Why don't

3:07

we just pick a really interesting subject,

3:09

drill into it and wouldn't it be

3:11

great if it had a sort of

3:13

Easter-y theme. Well we have found one

3:15

with the news that the price of

3:17

cocoa, the main ingredient of chocolate, has

3:19

hit a record price per metric ton

3:22

and not only that there are loads

3:24

of fascinating reasons for that that

3:26

tell us quite a lot about

3:29

our changing world. So let's open

3:31

the box of this episode of NewsCast, unwrap

3:33

the foil and start nibbling and we're gonna

3:36

do that with the help of BBC Economics

3:38

editor Faisaliz Lamb. Hello. Hi. Are

3:40

Easter eggs a big thing in your household?

3:42

Yeah yeah yeah big time. In fact when

3:46

I heard about this amazing Scottish

3:48

producer of the chocolate for the

3:50

Oscar goodie bags I Did

3:52

that thing that happens I Just thought I'd you

3:55

know what? these are the Easter eggs I've got

3:57

to get these Easter eggs and so I can

3:59

randomly order them. A month ago, nature

4:01

and up and much the joy of my

4:03

girls who will be scoffing Oscar worthy

4:05

Easter eggs with the another day. That's

4:07

all V Good does a vague and as

4:10

well that every year it's a month

4:12

when it lands. That's why your editor

4:14

level and I managed to a cast are

4:16

also here in the City or the

4:18

opposite as Professor Elizabeth Robinson who's Director

4:20

at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change

4:22

and the Environments. Hello Professor Robinson Allies,

4:24

Are you big Easter Egg fan? I'm

4:26

afraid I am. Yes, yes, I do like to the

4:28

strike. What's your Easter Egg strategy like all

4:31

the on go all in one day is the

4:33

I over few days in. Theory and practice.

4:36

Both of. Our when I'm sorry kid out, but it tends

4:38

to be little. Bit insulting. Okay and also here

4:40

is Anna Man whose Associate Director for Responsible

4:42

Business at the Fair Trade Foundation. Hi Anna

4:44

Allies: We will have seen your logo plastered

4:47

on many products as a sort of the

4:49

seal of approval from the to many Strikes

4:51

Bs And what's your Easter Eggs strategy If

4:53

there is one. An artsy i'm

4:55

gonna eat out person. I like

4:57

to say that process he meets

4:59

on one that unusual that that's

5:01

why like that. Are to save for

5:03

the last two years. Have not bought an Easter

5:06

egg cause I find it sucks because I live

5:08

by myself and I'm not. We had any big

5:10

Easter celebrations last few years and I find that

5:12

one whole Easter egg is just too much and

5:14

is a lot is just too much of a

5:16

right less. That's enough of me tell you about

5:18

my eating habits. Let's talk about what's going on

5:20

with with the economy, feisal income? What's this? What's

5:22

that the first? Or just give us the headlines

5:24

about how expensive chocolate has become and just kind

5:26

of put that in a bit of context. Or.

5:29

The price for total to commodity

5:31

oversee the is supposed to and

5:33

been is the make. Evil Chocolates

5:35

has absolute the spiral. The graph

5:37

is what we call parabolic. It's

5:39

just kind of like to sing

5:41

ups and he i say I

5:43

worked outside of see the nude

5:45

nude civilly. I worked out that

5:47

it costs more now per ton

5:49

of cocaine than copper time that

5:51

which suggests that may be if

5:53

if you the world minutes is

5:55

still missing so click those robbing

5:57

problems that Christmas though cyber. noise But

6:01

it was a nice, like, is that

6:03

true? I thought chocolate coins were all

6:05

weather, all... Anyway, anyway. Back to the

6:08

spreadsheets. Yeah, so, you

6:10

know, really pricey. There's a variety

6:12

of reasons which I think our

6:14

other guests are more expert than

6:16

myself involving extraordinary supply problems.

6:18

Perhaps there's a sort of climate

6:20

change angle here, but there's also

6:22

speculation in the markets. And

6:25

all of this inevitably will feed through

6:27

to the consumer price of

6:29

chocolate, especially those chocolates with

6:31

a high cocoa content, which is

6:33

not necessarily all chocolates. And I

6:35

just have to say really quickly

6:37

that there's an amazing economic content

6:39

to the analysis of chocolate, as

6:41

anyone who's watched Wonka would have

6:43

seen. I have seen Wonka. I'm

6:46

trying to think of a Faisal Islam element

6:48

of it. It's a cartel. There's a cartel

6:50

that controls the chocolate who were trying to

6:52

squeeze Wonka for our business, and they store

6:54

the chocolate underneath the bank

6:56

or something like that in a massive vat.

6:58

So there's plenty of economics. Is this just,

7:00

like, not enough supply and too much demand?

7:03

I think it's more than that,

7:05

actually. In any commodity market, there's

7:07

strange dynamics with the financialization, which

7:10

means the source of, you know, use in complicated

7:13

contracts called derivatives and all this sort of

7:15

stuff. So

7:18

then there are bigger picture

7:20

currents, as I said,

7:22

in terms of where these crops tend to

7:24

be made. There's a

7:26

long history, of course, of chocolate and

7:28

cocoa in particular having economic relevance, not

7:31

just in the films, as I mentioned.

7:33

But of course, the cocoa beans used

7:35

to be a very early form of

7:38

currency for the Mayans, where chocolate was

7:40

invented. And they literally used to trade

7:42

goats and jaguar skins and

7:44

stuff in the Mayan culture, paying

7:47

for them with cocoa beans. So, you

7:49

know, it's perhaps a reversion

7:52

back to something

7:54

very old. But I fear we'll

7:56

see more modern economic phenomena here

7:59

around shrink- You know,

8:01

your mini, which we'll probably get

8:03

onto in a moment, but yeah. Well,

8:06

you know what, let's do that now and then

8:08

we can sort of work backwards through the supply

8:10

chain and look at some of the other things

8:12

that are having an impact here. So you mentioned

8:14

shrinkflation. So this is the idea that you end

8:16

up paying the same for a product that's basically

8:19

got less content in it or you pay more

8:21

for the product that's got the same content in

8:23

it. So Anna, if

8:26

there's one thing that you want to point us to

8:28

that will help us understand what's going on here, what

8:30

would you pick? And I know there's more than one thing. So

8:32

pick like the main one thing.

8:35

I mean, I think in terms of

8:37

what's happening with cocoa prices now, it

8:39

has been kind of a perfect storm

8:41

of factors that have driven this. That's

8:43

kind of been building over the last

8:45

few years. So there's been climate change

8:47

that has been driving supply issues, you

8:49

know, changes in weather patterns, increase in

8:51

costs and diseases at farm level that's

8:53

been exacerbated by the increase in costs

8:55

to farm level two. So fertilizers

8:57

are much more expensive to prevent the risk

8:59

of that. Also driven by global inflation and

9:02

Russia and Ukraine war. There's

9:04

also the fact that cocoa prices have been very

9:06

low, probably too low for too many years.

9:08

So farmers have been unable to necessarily get

9:10

the right price for their land and be

9:12

productive. And then we've kind of had oversupply

9:14

for too long. And then

9:16

there's many other factors as well with kind of

9:19

changing legislation, etc. So there

9:21

is kind of a lot of factors that play

9:23

that means that supply has kind of shrunk and

9:25

the demand has maintained. OK, loads to talk

9:27

about there. Elizabeth, what actually is the climate change

9:29

angle here? So if we look

9:31

at the very rapid increase in price just recently,

9:33

building on from what Anna said, there's been a

9:36

weather event, a humid

9:38

heat wave, which is quite unusual. And

9:40

the World Weather Attribution Center has sort

9:42

of calculated that this is now 10

9:44

times more likely because of climate

9:46

change than not. And so that

9:48

built on other sort of extremes of

9:51

weather late in last year. So extreme

9:53

precipitation and then drought periods. And so

9:55

what we found is that the quality

9:57

and the quantity of the harvest of

9:59

the yields. has been harmed.

10:01

And we're basically talking about four countries

10:03

in West Africa. That's what I was going to say. So

10:06

80% of global cocoa production is in a

10:08

small part of four countries in West Africa,

10:10

most of it Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, a

10:12

little bit in Nigeria and Cameroon. And so

10:14

when you have a weather event that happens

10:16

to be in exactly the area where most

10:18

cocoa production occurs, you're going to get a

10:20

big shock to the global markets. And

10:23

what's kind of like the ideal range then for

10:25

a cocoa plant? Oh, that's a public risk question,

10:27

isn't it? I'm just

10:29

wondering how resilient these plants

10:31

actually are. Like, can they survive

10:33

extremes of weather or are they

10:35

really, really fragile? I

10:38

mean, from what we've seen is the challenge

10:40

also you've got is phenomenon in cocoa with

10:42

aging trees and aging farmers. So because the

10:44

price of cocoa has been so low for

10:46

so long, we have seen that kind of

10:48

farmers are getting much older. And also they

10:50

don't often have kind of disposable income to

10:52

invest in their farms. So they do have

10:55

quite old cocoa trees that aren't

10:57

very productive. And therefore when there is a change

10:59

in weather pattern, or they do

11:01

require kind of additional investments, the farmers don't have

11:03

that. And really for it to be a very

11:05

healthy farm on the land size they have, they

11:08

should be kind of replacing cocoa crops as

11:10

they go to be more resilient and thinking

11:12

about that. You also should have kind of

11:14

additional crops on the land. So shade trees

11:17

to protect the cocoa crops from the worst

11:19

of the sun and lack of weather.

11:21

And you can do kind of dynamic

11:24

agroforestry where really helps build resilience around

11:26

the cocoa crop. But all of those

11:28

interventions are really expensive and

11:30

also require quite a lot of kind of supply

11:33

chain support. If a farmer is going to take part of

11:35

their land out of action to regrow it and it takes

11:37

about five years for a cocoa tree to be

11:39

productive again, they need to know that

11:41

they're earning enough from the rest of their land.

11:43

And with really historically low cocoa prices, that just

11:46

hasn't been an option. So just to be clear,

11:48

the actual cocoa plant bush

11:50

tree, what's it? Tree? I

11:54

mean, what's the sort of the lifespan of an average one?

11:56

When do you need to like dig it up and plant

11:58

a new one for the whole cycle to be... working

12:00

really well. I mean a tree that's older than

12:02

25 years that hasn't been necessarily

12:04

well maintained and had a lot of kind

12:07

of the right inputs too will be

12:09

less productive and again it

12:12

completely depends on changing weather patterns and they are

12:14

changing much more rapidly it depends

12:16

on that trees exposure to the Sun to

12:18

chemicals and the way that

12:20

farmers treat that tree whether they're kind

12:22

of harvesting it right all of that

12:24

will either increase or decrease the trees

12:26

kind of lifespan and all of the

12:28

kind of best investments to prolong a

12:30

tree's life cost money. And

12:33

Feisal that point that Annam was making

12:35

about the cost of cocoa being too

12:37

low over the last few years that's

12:39

another example of where prices are kind

12:41

of about power in the market they're not

12:43

just like a sort of pure arithmetical thing.

12:46

Absolutely and it really matters obviously

12:48

the fair trade movement came

12:51

out of commodities like cocoa

12:53

and coffee and tea

12:56

and the question which I haven't been able

12:58

to discover an answer to which I think

13:00

is a vitally important is obviously there's an

13:02

angle here that some of these farmers are

13:04

really poor you know will they

13:07

benefit at all from this massive

13:09

increase in the cocoa price my instinct

13:11

is probably not but

13:14

kind of that might be a silver

13:16

lining to all of this increase in

13:18

price, shrinkflation, the mini

13:20

egg becoming a nano egg if

13:23

this goes through to farmers

13:26

in some of the poorest developing

13:28

countries in the world but I

13:31

suspect it won't. Now there's a

13:33

there's a phrase that's being used a lot at the

13:35

moment the bull market explain to

13:37

me what that is and what bulls have

13:40

got to do with the price of an

13:42

Easter egg. You have bulls and bears bulls

13:44

are people who are betting essentially that the

13:46

price as well cocoa

13:49

in this case but anything really is going to

13:51

go up and they make

13:53

what can be self-fulfilling bets on

13:55

that they can also mess

13:57

around in futures markets where

14:00

you say that the price is going to go

14:02

up or down in the future and you

14:04

kind of mess around and you end up

14:07

with like some massive warehouse worth of cocoa

14:09

that you don't want if you get on

14:11

the wrong end of that bet. And

14:14

to a certain extent to which

14:16

this financialization of commodity markets becomes

14:18

self-fulfilling, others will argue, and indeed

14:21

we've heard this from some of

14:23

the major confectionery CEOs that they

14:25

feel that immediately they won't need

14:27

to pass on some of these

14:30

increase in prices because

14:32

they've taken if you like a

14:34

fixed price for the cocoa and

14:36

they won't need to pass

14:38

this on. But looking at the charts, which

14:41

you can't do on a podcast obviously, this

14:43

price is so exponentially going up. It's so

14:45

kind of shocking actually that I can't help

14:47

but think that this is going to become

14:49

very visible, as I said, especially to lovers

14:52

of dark chocolate. Okay, well Feizel, I know

14:54

you've got to dash off and do something

14:56

else, so thanks for your time today and

14:58

enjoy your Easter eggs, whatever, your very

15:00

fancy Easter eggs. Two months later. Anna,

15:08

let's pick up on a few things there. Yeah,

15:11

the sustainability of this price,

15:13

because actually you've been sort of implicitly arguing

15:15

that the price should have gone up ages

15:17

ago, but is this too

15:19

much? I mean, I think the challenge

15:21

with the current situation that you've got and to kind of

15:23

the point around where the farmers are going to benefit and

15:26

also to the point around shrink inflation, there's

15:28

also greedflation and how much of this is

15:30

kind of the idea that companies are charging

15:33

more in an inflationary economic

15:35

context, but they're overcharging the consumer versus

15:37

what that product actually should have gone

15:39

up by. So really who's benefiting is

15:41

the end company rather than the farmer.

15:43

There is a potential risk of that

15:45

happening here, but the other complication in

15:47

cocoa is that they are sold

15:50

on the futures market. So cocoa being produced

15:52

today and Cote d'Forangana is going

15:54

to be sold at a price that's previously been agreed.

15:56

So it will take quite a long time to market

16:00

price, what that will mean

16:02

for the futures price for the future

16:04

cocoa that's traded. So there's quite a

16:06

long delay between current prices today and

16:08

what a farmer may or may not

16:10

get in a quite regulated market for

16:12

Coates-Foran-Gana at least. And

16:14

then on top of that, you know, this

16:16

is also being driven by supply challenges. So it

16:18

may be that some farmers are able to earn

16:21

more from the cocoa that they have, but they

16:23

have less cocoa. That's why there's a supply shortage.

16:25

So there is potential for this to not even

16:27

kind of be a net economic benefit for the

16:29

farmer on top of the fact that

16:31

they have had very high input costs for a

16:33

very long time and cocoa is very seasonal.

16:35

So there's often a long part of the year where

16:37

they're not earning anything from cocoa at all. And

16:40

then on top, there's other factors around how

16:42

reliant that farmer is on cocoa, whether that's

16:44

their sole source of income, you

16:47

know, whether they've diversified into something else. So there

16:49

are a lot of factors at play. So it's

16:51

unfortunately, whilst price is so important, and this is

16:53

something Fair Trade has been advocating for for so

16:56

long, it does need to be sustainable. And it

16:58

does need to be at farm gate level. And

17:00

it does need to be kind of matched with

17:02

a volume commitment that matters for that farmer's household

17:04

rather than just on whatever cocoa they have. So

17:07

you mean a promise to buy so much that don't

17:09

worry, Mr Farmer, you'll be able to feed your family

17:11

and educate them and live a nice life. Exactly.

17:13

Yeah. And to be able to kind of predict that.

17:15

So obviously with the Fair Trade minimum price, that's kind

17:18

of set and established and based on

17:20

the cost of production. And a farmer will know

17:22

that that's the very minimum on the Fair Trade

17:24

terms that they will earn. And then they will

17:26

also receive an additional fair trade premium to invest

17:29

in their farm. And the challenge with kind of

17:31

volatility to this extent is it's

17:33

normally boom and bust. So probably what will happen

17:36

is that as you know, prices are driven higher,

17:38

you will see more people move into cocoa, they

17:40

will try and increase their production, then one men

17:42

potentially be an oversupply, etc. Kind of the story

17:44

of time. I think, you

17:47

know, the difference this time is that the

17:49

cost of producing cocoa is just higher now.

17:51

And that's something we've been trying to advocate

17:53

for for a really long time is that,

17:55

you know, the inputs are higher, the asks

17:57

from farmers are so much higher, there's new

17:59

deforestation where they used to expand farm

18:01

size, they can't now, which means they have to

18:03

be productive on the land that they have, which

18:05

is a great thing if someone's investing with that

18:07

farmer in order to enable them to do that,

18:09

and that's my price is really important. So I

18:11

think it has the potential to

18:14

also test that prices could be higher, which

18:16

from a fair trade perspective is really important,

18:18

but not necessarily guaranteed tied to benefit for

18:20

the six year. But surely it's not in

18:22

the big chocolate maker's interests for their main

18:24

input to be really suffering and the people

18:27

do not be able to do it anymore

18:29

and it be lower quality and not

18:32

productive enough. What's in it for the chocolate

18:34

companies for it to actually be like this?

18:37

I think this has hopefully been a

18:39

real eye opener on the piece that a

18:41

lot of people have been warning for a

18:43

long time about is that, yes, supply will

18:45

fall off a cliff if we aren't investing

18:47

in farmers. They cannot mitigate the worst effects

18:49

of climate change and adapt to that and

18:51

also be sustainable and also receive

18:53

the price that they have for too long. And that's

18:55

why the average cocoa farmer earns less than a dollar

18:57

a day. And so many of the

19:00

cocoa farming families are associated with very

19:02

low income households. That's why child labour

19:04

is so prevalent. That's why deforestation is

19:06

such a challenge. And companies

19:08

know about those issues and they are really

19:10

concerned about them, but it has

19:12

been up until now kind of

19:14

a real challenge for them from a shopper perspective.

19:16

The number one feedback from most companies is people

19:19

don't want to pay more for their chocolate bar.

19:21

The companies therefore don't have the margins to invest

19:23

more in the cocoa farmer. And that's kind of

19:25

been the narrative today. And I think this is

19:27

quite an interesting economic time to consider what is

19:29

the shopper's perspective on the price of cocoa and

19:31

what would they pay. Right. Well,

19:34

we don't want to overindulge on Easter eggs, although I

19:36

can, there's seasonal reasons why we're doing that. So Elizabeth,

19:38

let's just broaden this out then. What are other other

19:41

foodstuffs that are vulnerable to climate change? What

19:43

should we have our eye on? Well,

19:45

gosh, pretty much anything. Oh,

19:48

that's good. Well, we've

19:50

got quite a few examples. So if we go

19:52

back to 2008 and the food crisis there, that

19:54

was triggered by sequential droughts

19:56

in Australia, which is a bread basket

19:59

country. that's responsible for providing

20:01

the global markets with a lot of

20:03

wheat. And so that led to

20:05

a shortage. But what's interesting

20:07

there is there wasn't a huge shortage of wheat. But

20:09

what happens after that is how people and countries behave.

20:11

And so there's this individually rational behavior that if you

20:14

know there's going to be a shortage of something, what

20:16

do you do? You hoard

20:18

it. Or you go and buy it and you hoard it.

20:20

And if you're a country and you think there's going to

20:22

be a shortage of something, you pretty much maybe think, well,

20:25

I'm going to put an export ban on it. And we

20:27

see that too. And so this is another example of why

20:29

prices move up much higher than they would do if

20:31

it's just a matter of how much less crop those

20:33

markets are. Because everything everyone does makes it go

20:35

up even higher. Exactly. So it's

20:37

individually rational to hoard. It's individually rational for countries to say, we're

20:39

not going to export just in case we won't be able to

20:42

buy the crop when we need it. And so you see prices

20:44

go up. So we saw that in 2008. But

20:47

even in the UK, we've seen that

20:49

when there's extreme weather events such as

20:51

extreme flooding or extreme drought, we see

20:53

the price of fruit and vegetables go

20:55

up. And actually, low-income people find it

20:57

hard to afford a nutritious balanced diet

20:59

because it's just very expensive to buy

21:01

fruits and vegetables. So whether

21:03

we're looking at a low-income country or

21:05

high-income countries, we're seeing these effects

21:07

increasingly from climate change. What is

21:09

your definition of a food crisis? And I'm

21:11

just thinking because I'm not sure I will

21:13

tell my imaginary grandkids about, oh, the weak

21:15

crisis of 2008 because I

21:18

don't remember it. So this is interesting. So

21:20

I was teaching at the time. And

21:23

I said to some of my students, I said, I

21:25

don't remember the 2008 food crisis, passed me

21:28

by. But one of my students was

21:30

a Cameroon. And she said, I remember my mother taking

21:32

me to school on the bus. And

21:35

there was rioting in the streets. And she took

21:37

me away. And if you were living in Haiti

21:39

during the 2008 food crisis, there were riots on

21:41

the street because the price of rice. Don't have time

21:43

to go into why the price of rice got so

21:45

high because there was a problem in the wheat markets. But

21:47

rice is a very thin global market.

21:49

The price of rice spiked. And there were

21:51

actually riots on the street. And there

21:53

was a regime change in Haiti. So

21:56

in high-income countries, we tend not to

21:58

see these food crisis. at the moment.

22:01

And what we really need to be thinking about is we're okay

22:03

at the moment, but global

22:05

food chains are very integrated. We're seeing more

22:07

and more disruption to food

22:10

systems. So we need to start even in high

22:12

income countries like the UK, we need to start

22:14

thinking and preparing and being a little more resilient.

22:16

And it's interesting when you use the word crisis

22:19

and you use the word resilient, because I just

22:21

think back to, to COVID, which

22:23

was like the biggest shock any of us

22:25

have experienced on that scale for

22:27

a long time. And okay, there was

22:29

one weekend when the supermarket seems a little bit

22:31

wobbly, but even then they're only wobbly on certain

22:34

things like toilet roll and chicken. As

22:36

I remember, because I wanted to make a homemade Nando's that weekend

22:38

not being able to go to actual Nando's. But

22:40

then they bounced back really quickly. So to

22:43

me, that seems like a system that is

22:45

very resilient, because it's very rare that I

22:47

can't get what I want. Yes.

22:49

And again, at the moment in the UK, we're

22:51

fairly resilient. But if you'd looked at what was

22:53

happening in low and middle income country, and data

22:55

was collected, sort of these rapid surveys of data.

22:58

And when COVID struck around

23:00

the world, food insecurity

23:02

went really high. And in this case, it was

23:04

in part because people lost their jobs or they

23:06

didn't have income, they couldn't afford to purchase food.

23:08

So when we talk about a food crisis, it

23:10

needn't be that there's less food being produced. It

23:12

might be that the food is in the wrong

23:14

place. Or it might be that people can't afford

23:16

it, or it might be not be sufficiently nutritious.

23:19

So these food crises can come in many

23:21

ways. And you're exactly right. We are so

23:23

sheltered from it by being high income. Because

23:26

in general, if you're less poor, you're more likely to

23:28

be more food secure. But if

23:30

we actually look at it, like 10, 20, 30 years ago, if you

23:32

looked in

23:35

globally, when we saw wealth

23:38

increasing poverty rates falling quite rapidly,

23:40

GDP per capita growing economic

23:42

growth, you could be fairly

23:44

confident that if poverty was falling, that

23:46

if incomes are increasing, food insecurity would

23:49

improve over time. Past three, four, five,

23:51

six, seven years ago, we start to

23:53

see a decoupling. And now we're actually

23:55

seeing increasing food insecurity, even though poverty

23:57

rates are going down. And that's worrying.

24:00

Part of that is due to climate change. Okay, so

24:02

what needs to happen so I can eat

24:04

an Easter egg, kind of guilt and worry

24:06

free? Well. It's

24:09

about solutions basically. It's about solutions. I mean, obviously

24:11

an easy solution for a shopper is looking for

24:13

something like a fair trademark. What

24:15

that means is that you have third party

24:17

verification, so it's not a company making a

24:20

promise to you that then kind of no

24:22

one's really checking, does mean someone's come unchecked.

24:24

And I think the really important thing for

24:26

a shopper to understand is that solving the

24:29

climate crisis and supporting farmers to be able

24:31

to keep producing the crops into the future

24:33

is a really expensive

24:35

endeavor for a farmer that really needs to

24:37

know what they're gonna earn the following season

24:40

and the following season and they need support

24:42

through that. And with fair trade with a

24:44

minimum price and the premium, they're really important

24:46

tools. And we're seeing how that's being used

24:48

for investments on farms for alternative

24:50

crops or more sustainable agricultural

24:53

practices. Really look for

24:55

a price promise, really understand what a

24:57

company says they're paying their farmers because

24:59

that's what really matters for a farmer's ability

25:01

to respond to climate change. But what have you

25:03

learned from your years at fair trade about how

25:06

consumers deal with all of that? Because actually when

25:09

you go and buy a chocolate bar, it's normally because you're

25:11

quite packish and you're on the way from somewhere to somewhere

25:13

else or you want to treat and you're not really, you've

25:15

not got like a Faisal Islam style spreadsheet in your head

25:17

with all that stuff in it. So what have you learned

25:19

about how to get people to care

25:21

about that? Normally we, from a fair

25:23

trade perspective, actually what we find is that

25:25

the climate crisis and the lack of supply,

25:27

it's there. But in thinking, as you said,

25:29

until the product disappears, until there's no bananas

25:31

tomorrow, it would take a long time for

25:33

people to really truly understand the vulnerability of

25:36

these products from a climate change perspective. I

25:38

think from a fair trade side, what we find

25:40

really resonates is when we're able to tell a

25:42

shopper that if they purchased this chocolate bar, they

25:44

supported a mother to send their child to school.

25:46

And it's really the family and the human element

25:48

that for fair trade, we find really resonates to

25:50

say, you could buy this chocolate bar, have a

25:52

delicious snack, and you've supported this family. Actually

25:55

the climate angle, it's taking a longer time

25:57

to help shoppers understand. There's very real impact.

26:00

to what they buy and the price they pay, somehow

26:02

there's still a bit of a disconnect there. So really

26:04

for us, it's the human element that works. Okay,

26:06

Elizabeth, you've had a bit of time to

26:08

think what would be a climate-friendly Easter egg?

26:11

Or you can answer that in the abstract if you want. Well,

26:14

yeah, I mean, I think I've been talking a

26:16

lot about sort of food poverty rather than Easter

26:18

eggs. But in terms of Easter eggs, I think

26:20

it's very much what Anne is saying, you know,

26:22

just, we need to be more aware of what

26:24

we're eating and how we're eating and how that

26:26

does affect. And chocolate's a tricky one because, you

26:29

know, sort of historically, farmers have expanded

26:32

into primary forests to grow

26:34

cocoa. And now they're sort of running

26:36

out of space there. And so there's

26:38

a question of how do we support

26:40

farmers? Because we're talking about chocolate and

26:42

it's fun at Easter to have an

26:44

Easter egg. But the livelihoods of the cocoa

26:46

farmers are really important as well. And

26:49

the economy, for example, in Ghana, cocoa

26:51

exports are incredibly important. And so if

26:53

it's, we can sort of joke about

26:55

eating Easter eggs and stuff. But actually,

26:57

this is an important part of the

26:59

Ghanaian economy and food security for those

27:01

cocoa farmers, maybe some of them benefit

27:04

from the higher prices, but maybe some

27:06

don't. And if we're not protecting the

27:08

soils, you know, there's a question of

27:10

the future of cocoa. And cocoa is,

27:12

the cocoa plants are sensitive to climate

27:14

change, they're sensitive to climate. I mean, not to

27:16

end on a really kind of dramatic

27:18

note, but is there a world where there

27:20

is no cocoa anymore? Because we've basically mucked

27:22

it up. It'll be more expensive, I

27:25

think, and harder to find in 2050, even

27:27

if we do achieve on it zero goals.

27:29

So they'll be remaking Wonka as a horror film. Yeah,

27:33

it also sounds to be a very specialist type of

27:35

cocoa. So there's a lot of Latin American fine flavor

27:37

cocoa that's potentially not as vulnerable to the climate change

27:39

you've seen in West Africa, but then what has that

27:42

meant for the livelihoods of two thirds

27:44

of the world's current cocoa production? So I think

27:46

there's some very real human consequences too. Yeah, Elizabeth,

27:48

thank you very much. Thank you. Anna, thank you

27:50

to you too. Thank you very much. Thank you.

27:52

And whatever you're doing over the Easter weekend, whether

27:55

it's celebrating Easter or celebrating something else, or maybe

27:57

you're working, I hope it's okay. And

27:59

we'll be back. with another newscast. Oh, when is

28:01

the next one? Oh yeah, it's me, Chris

28:03

Mason, Alex Forsythe and Henry Zephman, all together

28:06

actually for the first time, talking about all

28:08

the elections that are happening on the 2nd

28:10

of May. So a very varied diet for

28:12

newscast listening. What was the next one?

28:16

Hi. Newscast. Newscast from the BBC. Well,

28:18

thank you for making it to the end of another

28:20

newscast. You clearly ooze

28:23

standard for the next 2 years. Thank you

28:25

for watching.